


This Isn't What It Looks Like

by kisahawklin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 08:39:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas shows up bloody and hurting.</p><p>Written during the S8 mid-season hiatus; canon-divergent from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Isn't What It Looks Like

"Dean," Cas's voice comes over the phone, even croakier than usual. "Where are you?"

They've played this game enough that Dean knows how to give the information as accurately and as quickly as possible. "North Carolina. Siler City Motor Lodge, room 106."

The whoosh of air and wings isn't unexpected but Cas being close enough for Dean to feel his body heat through the back of his shirt is. "Wha–"

Before he can even turn around, Cas is even closer, draped over Dean's back, his right arm over Dean's shoulder and his palm against Dean's heart, pulling him back against Cas's chest. Weak, for Cas, but still unbreakable if Cas doesn't want it to be. 

And that's weird, but not nearly as weird as Cas's left hand, which is pushing Dean's shirt up in the back, and when he feels the searing heat that is Cas's skin against his spine, he would start freaking out but thankfully Sam walks out of the bathroom.

"Whoa," Sam says, his eyes going round for half a second before his face settles into a smirk. "Do you need me to give you a minute?" 

"No!" Dean shouts, hearing Cas's emphatic "no" echo through his rib cage at the same time. The smirk is off Sam's face as quick as it came, and he stares at them, his eyes flitting back and forth to the places they're connected, like he doesn't know what to do.

Dean grabs Cas's wrist, tries to pry him off, uses sarcasm. " _Personal space, Cas_!" Cas's arm isn't budging. If anything, he clings more tightly.

"Dean," Sam says softly, and Dean stops protesting, looking to Sam for an explanation. "He's hurt." Sam walks over and pulls the trench coat off of Cas, something that takes half a second, which means everything's all wrong because Cas has Dean in a death grip and his trench coat should have taken a wrestling match to get off. "It's pretty bad."

Dean tries looking over his shoulder, but Cas's face is buried in between his shoulder blades so he can't see anything. "Cas?"

There's still a patch of overwhelming heat where their skin is touching, the lower half of his back and presumably Cas's stomach, and Dean's already broken out into a sweat. He had no idea angels ran so hot. The Grace, probably. 

Cas mumbles something unintelligible, the words resonating in Dean's chest again, bouncing off his ribs. Sam is behind him too, now, so all Dean can do is stand still and wait for Sam's assessment.

He can feel Cas shifting or being shifted, and soon Cas's jacket and shirt are hanging off the arm wrapped around Dean's chest. Looking at the clothing drooping from Cas's elbow is really weird.

"Who did this to you, Cas?" Sam asks, and that's Sam's "oh shit, it's a bleeder" tone, so Dean's heart kicks up a notch. If someone can fuck Cas up this bad, it's got to be –

"Angels," Cas answers, his voice muffled by the way his face is pressed into Dean's skin. His palm presses down harder against Dean's chest for a second, the world's weirdest hug. "I need your sigils."

"Skin to skin?" Sam asks, and Dean can feel Cas nod against his back. "All right, hang on." Dean rolls his eyes – being stuck like this means he can't see what the hell is going on and it's really getting annoying.

Then Cas is pulled away from him, the arm around his chest giving way without protest, the heat against his back gone, and Dean shivers involuntarily. He turns around, knowing what he's going to see and hating it already. Sam's holding Cas in pretty much the exact position Cas had Dean, both of them shirtless, looking like the cover of a gay romance novel, except Cas is a mess, a bag of bones covered in scrapes and cuts and blood. 

Dean looks Cas over. He looks like he was worked over hardcore, and when they got bored, they strung him behind a monster truck and dragged him over gravel. There are parts of his skin that look more like hamburger meat than anything. There's a lot of blood on various parts of him, but he's not actively bleeding, or at least there aren't any spurters.

"What did they do to you?" 

Cas opens his mouth, but no words come out. Instead, his eyes roll back in his head and he starts to convulse. Sam almost loses his grip, but hangs on enough to yank Cas against him and send them both crashing to the floor. Dean stands there helplessly, watching Cas flail and Sam grab onto him with both hands, doing anything to keep him from slipping down to the floor and away from Sam's sigils.

Cas settles after ten seconds or so, unconscious. Sam yanks him up, tucking his arms in and pulling him back against his chest in a completely unnecessary submission hold. "Let's get him on the bed," Sam says. "It's going to take both of us, so take your shirt off."

Dean can't help the face he makes, but he knows Sam's right, so he pulls off his shirt and throws it over the nearest chair. "All right, now what?"

"Sit between Cas's legs, with your back to his front," Sam says, plucking at Cas's pants and spreading his legs. Dean closes his eyes and tries to remember that Cas is unconscious so bitching won't even be any fun. He gets himself in position, knowing exactly how close Cas is by how near the heat is. When Sam shoves forward and Cas is full against his back, Dean starts sweating almost immediately. He grabs blindly at Cas's arms, thrown over his shoulders by Sam, and holds Cas in place awkwardly.

"Okay, lean forward as far as you can," Sam says, and really, he can't have thought this through because as flexibility goes, Dean is more likely to snap in half than to be able to stretch his hamstrings. He groans through it, bending his knees to make it easier, and is rewarded with Cas being taken away, another shiver going down his spine, a longer one.

As soon as he's free, he jumps up off the floor and stares at Sam holding Cas. "Okay. Cas is injured. And unconscious."

"Yeah," Sam says. "And we both know how bad it must be if that's the case."

"He needs skin to skin contact with us to use our sigils to shield him." 

Sam shrugs one shoulder, making Cas jiggle a little in his arms.

"Okay, so – what about his insta-healing? Does that not work the same on angel-wounds?"

"I suppose angels would have found a way to actually hurt each other, sometime over the millennia." The look on Sam's face says exactly what a bunch of dicks he knows they are, but it's not like humans haven't done the same thing. It's just easier for them. "The bigger concern is whether Cas's angel form is as badly damaged as his vessel. If Jimmy's body isn't healing, I'm guessing Cas's angel form is pretty messed up. Or his Grace."

Dean nods thoughtfully. "All right, well, we can't do anything about the angel form or the Grace. Let's just take care of the vessel and then do some research." Sam raises an eyebrow at him, already guessing what Dean's going to say next. "You go settle in with sleeping beauty on the bed, I'll get the med kit."

"I'm better at sewing wounds than you are," Sam says, but Dean's not going to give in that easy. 

"I'm good enough – besides, when he's up to it, he's going to heal all the scars anyway. It doesn't have to be pretty."

Sam gives him the puppy dog eyes and says, "Rock paper scissors?"

~~~

Dean rolls his eyes for the millionth time as Sam gingerly cleans around another bunch of Cas's wounds. He shifts slightly, trying to keep his ass from falling asleep. Cas is a lot heavier than he looks.

"It's weird they're not bleeding," Sam says, as he starts stitching up one of the deep gashes on Cas's thigh. There are neat little rows of them along Cas's arms and legs, down his sides and in a mishmash all over his back. Dean isn't thinking about how they're going to have to position themselves so Sam can stitch up the ones on Cas's back. 

"Why is that weird?"

Sam starts on the next gash. He's not even stitching them up separately, there are so many, so close together. "Well, they're not scabbed over. They're still fresh enough that there should be some oozing, at least. And there should be at least a little blood when I put the needle in his flesh. But nothing."

Dean suddenly has a horrible idea. "You don't suppose they bled him dry?" He has no idea if a vessel could even survive that, but…

"Oh gross," Sam says, but it doesn't keep him from taking the knife sitting next to him and cutting a new gash along Cas's arm. Cas doesn't move and the cut doesn't bleed. The disgust is evident on Sam's face. "How can he even… I mean. I know he's not _alive_ exactly, but how is the body even functioning? There's nothing for the heart to pump, no oxygen circulation…"

"No blood magic," Dean says, and man, he's always hated angels outside Cas and Gabriel (and even them sometimes), but this is just too much, even for that bunch of assholes. 

"He needs a transfusion, then," Sam says. "I bet blood will help him heal faster." He finishes the gash he's working on and snips off the thread with his knife. "I wonder if blood type matters to a vessel."

"Don't stop stitching," Dean says. "The last thing you want is for the waterworks to be turned on while you're trying to stitch up a million cuts. We can work out the transfusion after humpty dumpty's put back together again."

~~~

They end up switching off, Sam's better sewing skills or not. Neither one of them can actually sit still for more than a couple of hours, especially not with an angel's dead weight on them. It's Sam's turn to take Cas when they flip him onto his front, much to Dean's relief. Sam's just a better sport about having Cas spread-eagled on his ass while he's half-naked. Why Sam is a good sport about it is something Dean puts firmly in the category of "do not ask." 

A little while after Dean starts stitching, though, he notices a pattern to the gashes on Cas's back. They look a lot like Enochian. "Shit, Sam, I think they carved something into his back. A spell or something."

"What?" Sam asks, flopping his head to the side – the only part of him he can really move without dislodging Cas. "What kind of spell?"

"How the hell would I know? I'm not exactly fluent in Enochian." Dean looks at the marks and the overall shape more closely. It kind of looks like… "Oh, shit."

"What?" Sam asks, pushing up. Dean punches him on the shoulder to get him back down before Cas slides off. "What is it?"

"It looks like the carving Crowley made on Brady's chest to keep him locked in his meatsuit. It's made out of Enochian words, but it's definitely the same symbol."

"Seriously?" Sam asks, and Dean can hear the eyeroll from here. "So maybe we shouldn't stitch those shut."

"No shit, Sherlock." Dean's already stitched one and a half of the symbols. He could cut the stitches out but he doesn't know what difference it could make at this point. If he did something wrong, it's already been done. There are never takebacks on that sort of thing. "But I already did a couple of them."

"Damn it," Sam says into the pillow. "Okay, stop stitching. We have to get Cas back to the bunker. We have to research this before we do anything else."

~~~

Dean'd thought that maybe, as the hours went on, it would get less strange having one or the other of them half-naked in the backseat with Cas. It doesn't. 

Sam's driving, one earphone in, listening to an audiobook with his steely eyes on the road – even though Dean knows at least half of his brain is soaking in some hunting book or another. Or maybe one of those tall ship books Sam likes, the ones that are dry as dust and twice as boring but have always made Sam grin, even when he had to read them inside comic books so dad wouldn't give him shit.

He's not smiling, though, so Dean's got his money on a spellbook, or maybe one of his resource texts about golems. 

Meanwhile Dean's ass is asleep again because the backseat of the Impala is just not big enough for two horizontal people unless they are really invested in having sex. Cas hasn't moved a muscle since he fainted, over twelve hours ago now, and it's completely unnerving. They've seen Cas beat up and bloody and nearly-human but nothing like the coma he's in now. Even when he'd been exhausted and recovering from the time travel he'd shifted. He'd twitched. His eyes had fluttered from time to time. This is too close to being a corpse.

"What'cha listening to, Sam?" Anything to distract him. He'll even talk about jibs and fo'c'sles or whatever, as long as he can keep his mind off the literal weight on his chest.

"Fairy lore. Nothing for this, just…" Sam's eyes meet his in the mirror. "Research."

Dean nods. "So, _is_ there anything about this? How much did the men of letters know about angels?"

Sam shrugs, pulling the earphone out. "Some. They have a section on angels. I skimmed it, looking for stuff on the tablet but I went back to the demon stuff instead. The trials seemed a little more pressing."

"Yeah, well, they're not today." 

Sam nods. They're still waiting to hear from Kevin about the next trial anyway. They can put that aside to hit the angel books for a while, see if they can help Cas. Sam waits a minute, flicking his eyes back and forth from the road to the rearview, and Dean can't think of anything else to say so he says, "I spy with my little eye something that begins with a."

Sam guffaws, grins that stupid grin of his, and says, "Angel. The half-naked one you've got leaning on you like your prom date."

~~~

Nearly a full day after Cas appeared out of nowhere and force-fondled him, Sam picks up the two-ton unconscious angel out of the back seat and carries him over the threshold of their bunker like the bride in some chick flick. 

"Where do I send the fondue pot?" Dean asks, waiting just inside the door so he can lock the bunker down.

"Hardy har har," Sam says, brushing past him and heading down the stairs.

Dean starts locking them in, but a gurgling sound makes him look down at Sam to see what's going on. Cas is having another fit and Dean takes the stairs two at a time, half-jumping, half-falling to the lower level. Sam is struggling to keep Cas in his arms, especially when he's alternating between throwing elbows and going completely rigid. 

"Set him down!" 

Dean yanks his shirt off over his head as Sam does what he's told. As soon as Cas is vertical, Dean grabs Cas's biceps and shoves his back into Sam and then the pair of them back against the wall. Sam grunts, and Dean thinks maybe he knocked his head, but there's no time to worry about that right now. 

Sam's huffing out breaths like he's in pain. Dean knows he's pushing pretty hard, but Cas is stronger than both of them. If they don't keep him under control, it'll only be a matter of seconds before the angel brigade gets here, and he doesn't really like the thought of them knowing about their secret hideaway. "Sorry, Sammy," he grunts, but Sam doesn't say anything, just grabs onto Dean and pulls him in tighter, flattening the Cas sandwich against the wall.

Cas makes a noise then, a pained groan, and Dean pulls back just enough to get a look at Cas's face. His eyes are squeezed shut, but he's obviously more conscious than he's been in a while. The groan gets louder and his face gets more pinched –he's definitely feeling the pain now. He stops twitching, shivering violently instead. 

"Cas?" Sam asks, his arms slipping away from Dean's back and onto Cas's shoulders. Cas doesn't answer and Sam shakes him a little. "Cas!"

The shivering stops and Cas's head lolls back onto Sam's shoulder. Dean can feel Cas's body go limp as he goes catatonic again. "Damn it."

He leans down to get Cas into a fireman's carry, leaving the duffels for Sam to take care of. He moves into the research area and Sam brushes past him with the bags, heading for the sleeping rooms. Dean looks around the common rooms for a second, groaning when he remembers there are no couches in the batcave. He's always meant to take care of that, eventually. It doesn't matter right now, since they can hardly schedule a delivery to a secret hideout and there's no way they're strapping it on top of Baby – not to mention it'd take both of them to get it into the bunker, which isn't happening until Cas is healed up. That means sitting on the floor – no way, his ass tells him already – or lying on beds, which his brain is cringing at, but he knows there is no other choice. 

He readjusts Cas, hiking him back up where he'd been sliding down his back (so much sweat – how Cas isn't always dripping with it, Dean will never know) and carrying him down to the sleeping rooms, picking the one just next to his, on the other side from where Sam usually sleeps, on those rare occasions he makes it to a bed.

He waits for Sam. The fireman's carry was convenient, but he can't set Cas down without losing contact. He waits for a minute or so, readjusting Cas every few seconds, before yelling, "Sam!"

He hears Sam running down the hallway – he must've already been pulling books – and he wheels around the corner, wild-eyed as he looks them over. "What?"

Dean frowns at him. "I can't set him down without help, dumbass."

"Oh, right," Sam says, stepping in and taking Cas off Dean's shoulders, easy as pie. "Sorry." He holds Cas face-forward in front of him, one arm around his stomach, holding him up, and the other loosely on one of Cas's shoulders for support. It's getting to be a familiar pose. "So now what?"

"Bed, I guess," Dean says. "It's that or the floor, and I am not sitting on a concrete floor for hours while you read up."

"You should sleep," Sam says. "I know you didn't sleep in the car – you've got to be exhausted."

"Can't," Dean says. "No spooning. Besides, I'm hardly a snuggler, I'll probably roll over and then we'll have half a dozen junkless asshats in the room."

"So sleep sitting up," Sam says. "Go grab a bunch of pillows, set yourself up against the headboard, and then I'll lean Cas back on you."

Dean thinks about it a second and nods. "All right. But you should do your research in here, too. If I'm going to sleep, we need someone with one eye on Cas."

"Fine," Sam says, eyeing the tiny desk in the corner. Dean smirks, knowing exactly what Sam is thinking – the kid is so picky about his desk space – and goes to get a bunch of pillows.

~~~

It's impossible to sleep. Dean's never been good at sleeping when he's hot. It's the excuse he's always used when he left women after sex. Most of them didn't mind, but sometimes there were cuddlers. Not that he didn't try, at first – he didn't actually mind some gorgeous woman draped all over him – but he'd wake up after an hour or two, burning up, and slip out while they were sleeping.

Cas is a hundred times warmer than any woman he's been with. He finally knows what people mean when they say their sleeping partner is a furnace. It feels like he's wrestling a wood-burning stove. He closes his eyes and tries deep breathing and all the other crap Sam tries to get him to do, but none of it works. He's too hot to sleep, which is bad enough, but he's sweating like crazy too, so the pillows behind his back are soaked, and that's just gross.

Sam's taken a shower and gathered his books and is comfortably resting with his feet up on the end of the bed, two books on his lap and one more in each hand. Dean's never understood reading four books at once; it's always been a one at a time thing for him, comparing _after_ he read, but Sam's always been better at the research thing.

"Got anything?" Dean asks. If he has to be awake, at least he can keep up with the theories.

"I thought you were sleeping," Sam answers, not taking his nose out of either book. 

"Too hot."

That gets Sam's attention. He lowers the books and looks Dean and Cas over. "It'd be easier if you were on your side. You could just rest your upper chest against his shoulders and then angle everything else out."

The warning bells are going off in his head, Dean's already labeled this "do not ask" but the way Sam seems to be completely comfortable moving Cas around like a life-size Ken doll is starting to get creepy. "Why are you so good at this?" 

Sam grins. "At what?"

"Oh, don't give me that." He sweeps a hand down Cas. "Half-naked dude Tetris."

Sam shrugs. "I _am_ a snuggler."

It doesn't really surprise Dean. He has vague memories of them cuddled together on the second motel bed when they were little. Dean had been as scared as Sam at first, and then it was his job to keep Sam safe, so a little cuddling didn't seem like the worst solution to that problem. It stopped before Sam was double-digits, though.

"Here," Sam says, setting the books down carefully and going around to the foot of the bed. He spreads Cas's, and by default, Dean's, legs a little and nudges a knee in, leaning forward to press his chest against Cas. He snakes his arms around Cas's back and pulls him off of Dean, just enough for him to scoot out from behind Cas and get free. He shivers as the sweat cools almost instantly in the air.

"Why don't you shower," Sam says, already shifting Cas back down to the bed, lowering him down and hovering over him, breaking Dean's brain with how much he looks like a sex scene out of some romance movie. It's only half a second before he rolls smoothly onto his back, his head on one of the not-sweat-drenched pillows and Cas's head pillowed on his shoulder. It's only marginally less disturbing than the last position, but Dean is not looking a gift horse in the mouth. He heads for his room, already stripping down as he thinks about the showers.

~~~

Once he's clean, it's a lot easier to deal, and he heads to the sleeping room to take over for Sam. He doesn't know if he's more upset or relieved that Sam's fallen asleep, the books open next to him on the bed. Cas is as dead to the world as ever, so Dean settles in with one of the abandoned books and wishes he had made some coffee while he was up.

Sam wakes not too much later, thank god because Dean's eyes start to hurt after reading some of the text in these books. "Hey," he says. "You ready for some sleep?"

"Hell yes," Dean says fervently, setting the book down with a thump on the desk. "Even if it's with the angel whose core temperature is roughly the same as the surface of the sun."

"We'll make it work," Sam says, and he does. He curls Cas on his side, pulling his body far to Sam's side of the bed, leaving most of the open space for Dean. The only thing is that Cas's back has to be against Dean's chest, which isn't exactly the problem – it's Cas's head being right next to his and his hair ticking Dean's nose that's the problem. Eventually he finds a way to jam a pillow between them and settles down, falling asleep before his eyes even close.

~~~

There's no way it's been four hours since he went to sleep, but somebody's shaking him awake and his damn gun is in the other room, which is too bad because killing people with his bare hands just takes forever.

"Dean," Sam whispers, and Dean's eyes shoot open immediately. He's still on the bed and Sam's lying across from him, head resting on the book he probably fell asleep on. "Where's Cas?"

Dean bolts out of bed, grateful for decided to leave his shoes off so he can be quiet. If there are angels lurking, he wants as much advantage as he can get. He and Sam stop in his room to grab weapons – a knife each just in case they need the blood magic and at least one gun in case it's not angels, and head into the main area of the bunker silently.

Cas is standing in the middle of the room, arms outstretched, face to heaven. He's glowing faintly in the dark room, and Sam makes a choking noise that scares the living daylights out of Dean. He looks over at Sammy to see blood dripping from his mouth and nose. "Sammy?"

Sam shakes his head, pointing to Cas. "I'm fine. Keep your eye on the sleepwalking angel." He wipes his face with the bottom of his shirt, spreading the blood around more than cleaning it up. Dean decides that as soon as this Cas thing is dealt with, freaking out about how Sam's taking these trials is going to start immediately afterward.

Cas lowers his arms, slowly, and the glow fades until it's dark in the room, only the light spilling out of the hallway backlighting the area. There don't seem to be any other angels, which is the only blessing in this whole situation.

"Cas," Sam says, reaching out. 

"Don't wake him up," Dean says, too late, because Sam's hand touches down on Cas's shoulder and Cas shrieks like he's auditioning for Psycho.

"Whoa, Cas, whoa," Sam says, his arms up in that placating way of his, the one that never fools anyone because despite the puppy-dog eyes, he's still huge and intimidating. He grabs Cas's shoulder tightly and turns him around, probably going for a grappling hold. Cas starts to struggle, throwing punches that sound like they're breaking Sammy's ribs, and starts to convulse again. Sam gets his arms around Cas, pulling his back against his chest and taking a wrist in both hands.

"Out!" Cas gasps between two fits. "Get me out of here!" 

Dean grabs Cas in a fireman's carry and runs to the stairs, vaulting up them and out the door, Sam hot on his heels.

"Cas," Dean says, setting him down and glaring at Sam until he comes up and takes over the sigil-sitting. He slaps Cas's face until Cas winces and opens his eyes. "What the hell, Cas?"

"Angel warding."

Dean looks at Sam for confirmation. He shrugs. "They did say it was warded against every evil thing."

"I am not evil," Cas says, and Dean can't help rolling his eyes. 

"Most angels are dicks, Cas."

"But not evil, Dean." Cas groans, louder. "What is that place?"

Sam catches his eye and shakes his head minutely; Dean's pretty sure Sam's instincts are right on this one, so he just says, "Long story. Besides, I think figuring out what happened to you is more important right now."

Cas side-eyes Dean, giving him a look his dad would be proud of. "I was tortured."

"Heaven's looking a lot like hell these days," Sam says dryly. "If there were wards, how did we even get you in the building?"

"I don't know," Cas says. His knees buckle and Sam hauls him up by the armpits. "I should have been sent back to heaven if I set foot inside."

"The symbol," Sam says, looking over Cas's head at Dean. "Do you think?"

"What symbol?" Cas asks, looking at Dean with his intense stare. It's not quite as effective as usual with Sam holding him up like a ragdoll, but it's not completely ridiculous, which is saying something.

"You have a symbol cut into your back," Dean says. "We think it keeps you locked in your vessel." 

Cas pulls himself upright, taking his weight on his own two legs. "That's impossible." He starts to lean forward and Sam grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him back. 

"Here," Sam says, nodding his head at Dean. "Take Cas so I can take a picture of his back."

Dean shakes his head. This has gone beyond strange into seriously messed up. Passing a half-naked angel around like a hot potato is just too weird to even think about. He steps up to Cas and pulls him into a hug. At least this way he doesn't have to look at the guy.

Sam grabs his phone out of his pocket and snaps a picture, coming back in to make a Cas sandwich as he hands Cas the phone. Dean backs away, letting Sam loom over Cas, holding onto his shoulders loosely, like he's bringing his date home to mom. 

"That's…" Cas says, staring down at the picture. He makes a gagging noise and Dean takes two quick steps back. If Cas is going to blow chunks, he's not going to be in the blast radius. "That's _blasphemy_." He does retch, but it's dry heaves, nothing solid. "That is a perversion of a demon spell."

"Sorry," Sam says. Dean can see him squeeze Cas's shoulders, dimples of pressure under his fingertips on Cas's skin. "You also don't have any blood left in you."

Cas cranes his neck to look up at Sam. "Excuse me?"

"You can't tell?" Sam asks, for all the world looking like he's just curious. Maybe he is. "I thought you'd know what was wrong with you."

"I can't really concentrate," Cas answers. "I can only remember bits and pieces, and it was all bad."

Dean sighs. This is going to take some time, and the last thing he wants to do is stand around half-naked outside the batcave playing pass the angel.

"Well, if it's really angel-warded but still somehow lets you hang around, I say we take this back inside."

"It hurts," Cas says. "To be inside hurts."

"Suck it up, buttercup, because to be inside means you don't need to have skin-to-skin contact with one of us to borrow our sigils."

Cas looks up at Sam for confirmation and at his nod, lowers his head. "Fine. But give me a moment to make some assessments out here. Also, I would like to ingest large quantities of painkillers while inside."

"We'll get you all set up," Dean says, though he has a bad feeling the pain Cas is feeling is not the physical kind. 

"Close your eyes," Cas says. "This will only take a minute."

Dean shuts his eyes immediately, knowing what's coming next, but the light doesn't sear through his eyelids like normal – it's more like a really bright interrogation lamp. He chances a look, one squinted eye, and Cas's eyes are glowing, but not as brightly as Dean expects; the glow under his skin is muted too.

"Cas?" Dean asks. He has a bad feeling Sam's theory about Cas's angel body being messed up is close to the mark. Cas stops glowing and sighs out a deep breath, looking more diminished than Dean's ever seen him. "You all right?"

"No," Cas says, the pain showing on his face definitely something more than physical. "I am not all right." Dean can see Sam squeeze Cas's shoulder and Cas closes his eyes and drops his head. "Let's go back in."

They shuffle toward the door, Sam behind Cas and Dean behind them both, waiting to see Cas's reaction on setting foot inside. He starts to shiver, but controls it within seconds. It isn't until Dean seals the door that Cas starts to go rigid again. That's some powerful mojo those Men of Letters had going on. It's not the first time that he's been glad there aren't any of them left.

"You going to make it?" Dean asks, leaving Sam to deal with clean up as he heads down the stairs. He's freezing and just wants to be fully dressed for the first time in days. 

"I will survive," Cas says to his retreating back, and damn straight he will.

~~~

Once they're all settled – Cas with a shower, which is possibly the weirdest thing Dean has had to explain to him, Sam with all the angel books in their library, and Dean with the red pepper and sausage frittata that's only half burned – Cas starts to talk.

"I don't remember all of it," Cas says, "but I remember the torture. I remember them shredding my Grace," – here Cas shudders so hard Dean has to put a hand on him to make sure he won't shake out of his seat – "After that things get fragmented. Torture of my vessel was suddenly much more effective, the pain physical and spiritual at the same time."

Sam's nodding along, reading in two different books as he does. He probably doesn't even know he's doing it. Dean would kick him if it was anybody but Cas, who wouldn't take offense even if the thought might cross his mind.

"Why didn't they just take your Grace?" Dean asks. It seems like the easiest way to incapacitate an angel.

"The only person who can remove an angel's Grace is the angel themselves," Cas says, bowing his head a little and adding, "and God."

Dean stops eating to mull this over. "So they damaged your Grace so you couldn't heal and then locked you in your meatsuit."

Cas gives him his disapproving look, the one for when Dean has said something true but distasteful, and in the most vulgar way possible. Which is fairly accurate, for once. 

"What I can't figure out is how I escaped," Cas says. "I remember someone, a human, coming to my aid. He was wearing a strange mask."

Sam makes a sympathetic noise and picks the burnt parts of the frittata off of Dean's plate. "Sounds like Ash."

Dean chuckles. He wouldn't put it past Ash to help out their angel, whether out of loyalty or boredom, he couldn't say. "Well, you're out, so I'm not worrying about that part. I want to know how we fix you."

"Well," Sam says, "there's not a lot out there that heals angels because there's not a lot out there that can hurt angels. But I might have found something." He pushes a book over to Cas, who looks down at it and nods.

"The Balm of Gilead. Yes, that would work." He sighs heavily. "My Grace is badly damaged. It was difficult to fly to you in that motel; I can't fly to Mecca to procure any."

"You won't have to," Dean says, raising an eyebrow when Cas and Sam turn identical confused looks on him. "Wait," he says, sitting back and enjoying the moment. "You didn't actually read the spreadsheet I made of all those artifacts."

Sam looks guilty, which, considering how pale he's gotten, is too disturbing to enjoy. Dean sighs and leans in to the table. "Balsam of Mecca. It's in one of the earthenware jars in the storage room, the one I cleaned out and organized while you sat on your ass and pretended you weren't sick."

And damn it, that makes Sam look even guiltier, so Dean rolls his eyes. "Come on, princess, let's get the damn jug and heal ourselves an angel."

~~~

"Well, how about…" Sam says, sighing and shaking his head. 

"Maybe if we…" Dean says, and reconsiders. Bringing the grace out into the open would just blind him and Sam, or worse. 

"Are you sure it has to be rubbed in?" Sam asks, his forehead scrunching up like he's trying to will another possibility into existence with his brain.

"It's an ointment," Cas says, "it must be massaged into the damaged parts to work."

"But the damaged part is your _grace_ , Cas. If it fixes itself, it'll smite us."

"My vessel is damaged," Cas answers, "and I can't rub ointment into my own back. If you heal my vessel, I can heal my grace."

"Right," Sam says. "So we just have to… massage your body with holy ointment."

"Yes," Cas answers, giving them the "I'm glad you worked it out for yourself" grin.

~~~

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I found the idea of having the boys be half-naked and required to touch amusing. So sue me.


End file.
